Holidaying: The Photo Recap

It's some time late evening and I’m just dealing with yet another frenzied week. Sadly, I've had about as much sleep as Paris Hilton has brain cells so forgive me if I haven’t a lot of time to write about my vacation that took place two weekends back. I figured I'd leave you with pictures of the Early Vacation of '10.

What went down during that weekend, you ask? Well, we/I...

* Went to the Tibetan settlement in near Coorg;

* Stayed the monastery;

* Spent hours at the Sera Jey Temple and The Namdroling Temple (also know as the

Golden Temple);

* Strolled through a local garden at the monastery;

* (You worn out yet? By this point, we were!);

* Ate lots of authentic Tibetan food – Thukpa, Momos, Shaptra;

* Took care of musician boy with a stomach bug;

* Shot hundreds of pictures; and

* Seriously dreaded going back to work.

Whew. So, now that I'm back from butt stuck work for an ungodly nine hours (not including travel time). That's all I've got. So, what's up with you?
Couple of nights ago I heard the cover of ‘Psycho Killer’ by Velvet Revolver (originally performed by the band ‘Talking Heads’). The song has a certain shine. If you take the time to play this one you’re all in for a treat. Have a listen and a great week.

Wow! I haven’t blogged in a couple of days… Are you guys sick of my uber-unsurprising weekend recaps? Because that's exactly the kind of action I'm about to break out on your asses right now. If you don't mind.

The weekend was a tough one and, while this one promises to be a bit quieter, well, that promise is quite frequently broken. Luckily, Friday night and Sunday were major vegetation days. And I needed vegetation. Not a nice cold iced beer or a head of iceberg ice cream. I'm talking time without the need to think. On Saturday, I went out to this popular burger joint that so many I know have been talking about.

Verdict? The best damn beef burger I’ve tasted in my life. The company? Awesome. Both were excellent.
So, all-in-all, it was a fantastic weekend that I wished had never ended. But it obviously did, since sitting at my desk downing a cup of steaming hot water in the hope of recuperating from my nasty cold wouldn't be something I'd naturally decide to do if I'd had a choice in the matter.

Well, lots of things came together - I decided to try taking a picture of my niece on camera (A side note: She hasn’t been very camera friendly since she came back from her 6 month long vacation in Nagaland.) I clicked her saying ‘Yo China’ (her version of cheeeeeeese) - all at the right second. But of course, it wasn't just luck. It was persistence. I give you the original outtakes.

It has been a full month since the Lifehouse series graced this humble page (sorry mates, I couldn't post regularly, but work and sickness are simply dominating my time). So I still care. Honestly, I still care. So enjoy the last Lifehouse track on EC off the album ‘Smoke & Mirrors’. I hope it’s been worth the wait and we’ll all keep our fingers crossed that it’s not too long before they return. Enjoy the music.

Lifehouse with ‘Had Enough’

Scullers’ Get Their Groove Back

It appears that the heavenly bodies have united against me in a cosmic joke.

Let me explain. The trend at Scullers this season are actually sane, and this is overlapping with the first time in my life that I’m broke.

I used to shop at Scullers years ago. With ribbed sweaters and pastel coloured shirts, they always had a classic sense of fashion. After that they experimented, what I’d consider a strong euphemism, with different styles, until this season.

The spring/summer collection has gone back to it’s classic roots, with a lovely collection of chino shirts for women. New clothes are definitely more of a want than a need, so it’s hard for me to justify going further into debt to add more to an already full closet.
Maybe I’ll wait until it goes on sale at the end of summer. The problem, especially at Scullers, is that the small sizes disappear within days.

The cosmic gods, they’re laughing at me.

Since I purchased my Nikon. Some of the people I’ve photographed over the course of my sessions have made it a point to tell me I did a fantastic job with the pictures, and it really made my day.

I think I’ve really developed as a photographer in the little time I’ve owned my first SLR camera. Looking back on a year of photos has made me realize that I’ve learned a lot, not only simple photographic theory, but familiarity with my camera and post-processing as well. But I still have a lot more to learn, especially with exposure and metering, as digital SLR’s make it easy to get good shots without really needing to have an in-depth understanding.





Whether or not you actually like Lifehouse (or the copious amount of tracks that I’ve uploaded) we can all agree on one thing. Jason Wade. The lead singer of the band is brilliant at almost every single turn. So when he and his group came up with their new album I just knew it was going to be epic. And trust me, epic it is.
Honestly I’m not sure if there is anything I would change about the song ‘From Where You Are’. Let’s see. It’s about three minutes. It’s impressive. It changes moods and builds to an ending that can only be described as poignant. Really, I mean really, is there anything even slightly disappointing about this song?

Sorry to be so late to the party!

This weekend I’ll be crossing two things off my Life List: becoming best friends with my boss and going on my first pub crawl. I’ve wanted to go to pub crawling ever since I started drinking, but I was too young and had strict non-alcoholic parents who always took us to the beach or to grandma cottages for vacations with bottles of raspberry juice. But now that I’m a grown up and can stay up as late as I want and spend my paycheck on alcohol and pretty things and camera equipment, I am thrilled to spend a weekend severely dorking out with about 25 of my most fun colleagues visiting 10 pubs and chugging down massive amounts of the golden liquid and someone might’ve needed to taser gun me before I said ‘we’re out’. Too late!

This kinda freaks me out, because nineteen is an age I remember very clearly, and, a few things aside, it really wasn’t all that different from now. Okay, I can buy my own alcohol and I gave up on the whole hip-hop over-sized clothing thing, but other than that, on the inside, I still feel a lot like I did when I was nineteen.

Hanging out on the weekend for 8 hours with 25 of your co-workers are ships passing in the night, and try as we might, it will never work between us. Like former lovers, alcohol is the only thing that brings us together, and, thankfully, parts us before the sun comes up.

Also here are some pictures if you’re interested in that sort of thing, which obviously I am.



Continuing the Lifehouse series is a way to give us all the gift of this incredibly talent band. You see the path they’ve taken this year is one they’ve been on before. And in fact it’s the best path they could be on. This EP takes them back to the raw grit that flowed deep into arguably their best overall album No Name Face. What you’ll find in their recent album ‘Smoke & Mirrors’ is a collection of tracks and their leftover brilliance. This is the first single off the new album and it’s my favorite of the bunch. The venom that drips from Jason Wade’s trademark vocal delivery is absolute perfection. And if I didn’t sell you on Lifehouse earlier then consider this my official endorsement of the above album. Give it a listen. I seriously love this series and I hope you’re as enthralled as I am. Lifehouse with ‘Crash and Burn’.

I've been hearing friends telling me that they’re going to get hitched. My best friend, Runa being one of them. It's been a very cool experience watching these people in relationships and now finally seeing them getting married. Seeing the setbacks are humbling because it's never that easy making up your mind to settle down; but seeing them downright happy is a great feeling.

It's exciting but at the same time, a little sad. Everyone's growing up, including me. It's weird. You dream about it as a kid, living it up with some Prince Charming for the rest of your life. It's harder than it looks, and when you reach that point you think, "Wait, what? When did I become a grown-up?" It's a wake up call: you're not an adolescent anymore. You have the C-word. Compromise.

I'll always be a kid at heart though. Heck, I still laugh at "huffle puff" and will always do "That's what she said." But getting married... you can't help being more serious and a little less fun. Except I tell myself, ‘you just live it up. Embrace it and keep on laughing’.


(Click to view close up)

I think cinnamon rolls are a hidden treasure. They're my favorite. What's yours?


Off the fourth album by Lifehouse, Who We Are – ‘Come Back Down’ is quite simply a brilliant single. Other than that very serious statement (one which I have contemplated over for the past) I cannot figure out what else precisely confines the mood of this song. I’m struggling with how best to summarize a track that is beautiful, affecting, and dazzling throughout quite literally every single note. It’s a single so good, so undeniable; it forces me to go back to my old ways of literally forcing everyone I know to listen to it from start to finish. It’s a single that is so well created that I’ve listened to it now about twenty times.

For reference the following statements say nothing about the actual sound of the band, the type of music they produce, but it’s the easiest way for me to explain how. It’s well crafted and worth listening to, the song is infused with magnificent lyrics and it’s so epic and so moving you’re required to start it over again and again and again.